One of my favorite new(ish) rock bands is Alberta Cross. They have an incredible record out called Broken Side of Time, make sure you pick that up, it’s fantastic. They recently did an interview and live session at Electraplay and here’s the video from one of my favorite not so rockish tunes called Ghost of City Life.

UPDATE: Re-published today for the re-release

I’ve been listening to The Medicine for a couple weeks solid. I don’t like doing first impression reviews because most of the time my favorite songs end up being those that took a while to grow on me. My ears start hearing things on the 10th listen that I didn’t hear the 9 times previous. So what did I hear?

The album starts off with Reckoning Day and I’m blown away by John Mark’s vocals. His voice sounds better than I’ve ever heard it, not only in presence but tonally I think his voice is just spot on. You can also hear exactly what John Mark was talking about in the natural reverb recording techniques they were experimenting with. The warmth of the verb is a tone carried throughout the album and really ties each song together and I think creates a great atmosphere for the heart of the album which is a story resurrection.

John Mark tells the story of Christ’ resurrection with intense language and vivid imagery, fitting for the story that’s told. This is demonstrated in songs like Skeleton Bones,

Skeleton bones stand at the sound of eternity on the lips of the found
Graves stones roll to the rhythm of the sound of you
Skeleton bones stand at the sound of eternity on the lips of the found
Yeah so separate those doors and let the sun of resurrection in

One of the greatest songs on the album, and one I can’t wait to do on Easter, is Death In His Grave. The imagery and phrasing used in that song is so incredibly moving, the chorus says:

On Friday a thief, on Sunday a King, laid down in grief
But awoke with the keys, of hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ laid death in his grave

The resurrection theme not only deals with the historic moment but also addresses our own personal death to sin and resurrection in Christ as shown in songs like Carbon Ribs, Dress Us Up, Out of the Ground and Ten Thousand. In our previous interview I asked John Mark if there were any he could see being used in corporate worship, and I think there are quite a few here that will be used. Dress Us Up is one that jumps out as something an entire congregation could get behind and sing without trouble. The song proclaims the power of God’s love over death.

Dress us up in the blood of a son
Who opened up His veins so that we would overcome
Hell and the grave and the power of his love
After 3 dark days he showed us how it’s done
and he still does

I don’t think there can be any question this is John Mark’s finest work. This is certainly a step forward musically, lyrically and in his songwriting. The songwriting still has the exposed emotions John Mark is known for but this record comes across as a more matured presentation, not quite as raw as before. It’s truly a storyteller album and the story is captivating and beautiful. Go buy this album now!

originally posted 10/7/08

This is the kind of subtle approach I look for in a drummer. Considering adding this to our worship training material.

This video is part of the 5 song Good Friday set that Mars Hill is giving away for free. Love these guys! This arrangement of Jesus Paid It All is absolutely incredible.

I recently sat down with Adam Pasion who’s new album “O Hear the Rattling” (iTunes) seriously impressed me. The music to me is best described as dark folk, very rich lyrically, with dark melodies and full folk string instrumentation and groove. I’ve not heard another Christian album like this at all, and by Christian album I just mean Adam is a Christian who wants to see Christ glorified in his music, but these aren’t necessarily corporate worship songs.

In part 2 of the interview we talk about the story behind the track “Gypsy Girl.”

 

 Adam Pasion Interview Part 2 - "Gypsy Girl" story [03:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In Part 1 I discussed how dangerous it is for our worship to be uninspired and in Part 2 I talked about how often our worship music can be cheap and its impact on the gospel. In Part 3 I discussed the prevalence of the fear of man in our often safe worship music. In Part 4 I discussed the importance of being pureposefully and missionally original. For the conclusion of this series I’m going to discuss the danger of our worship being inauthentic.

5. Inauthentic

There are 2 primary ways our worship can be inauthentic, one way is how our worship presents or describes our object of worship, Jesus. Another way our worship can be inauthentic is in our engagement and life with Jesus in worship. Bad art will take some vague idea and attempt to represent it in the cheapest way possible to achieve an intended emotional response from viewers. Neither the artists engagement or representation of the object of art is authentic it’s just utilitarian. I’m going to use 2 definitions of authentic to illustrate this idea.

Authentic Jesus

• def. authentic: conforming to fact and therefor worthy of belief

If our worship is not conformed to truth, the person and work of Jesus, then what we are singing is not worthy of belief and shouldn’t be sung. Our worship can lead us and others astray from the gospel by either being generously vague or acutely false. And honestly there are great examples of both in popular CCM worship. John Owen wonderfully said,

“We must not allow ourselves to be satisfied with vague ideas of the love of Christ which present nothing of his glory to our minds.”

And I love how Bob Kauflin puts it,

“If most of our songs could be sung by Buddhists, Muslims, or Hindus, it’s time to change our repertoire.” -Worship Matters

We have to be careful about crafting songs that are vague and presenting an inauthentic view of the very specific and clear demarcation of Christ and anything other than Christ. Our job as worship leaders is to point people to Christ, not an “elevated idea” or even an idea about Christ, but Christ himself. If you’ve read any previous posts in this series or any other posts on this blog really, you’ll know how I value creativity. I think there are many ways to creatively point people to Christ and imagery, poetry and the arts in general can be used in a way that present clearly, the authentic Jesus. So I’m not saying art = vague, both simplicity and creativity have the same potential to miss the mark, use them both with wisdom.

Not much needs to be said about acute false statements, descriptions, ideas of Christ in worship. They exist unfortunately, and they always will until Christ returns. This is typically what separates worship pastors and music leaders, entertainers and shepherds. A pastor seeks to lead the congregation to Jesus and remove every obstacle in that journey including bad lyrics, but a entertainer seeks bring something of themselves to the people in the context of church, but not Christ. Don’t be an entertainer.

Authentic Worshippers

• def. authentic: genuine; undisputed credibility; with authority

In other words, believe and live what you sing and sing what you believe and live. Paul urged the Colossian church to “walk(live) in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work…” How careful we should be singing something we don’t believe or have no evidence or fruit of believing in our lives. Our religion is so transparent at times that we get used to operating in it without even seeing it.

Our worship should be saturated with humility and repentance when we start singing things we know we struggle to believe or live out. This is why I seldom make it out of a worship set without crying. Glorifying God for who he is in worship forces me to see the separation in sin, the short comings in my life, and moves my heart and affections more towards Christ. Being an authentic worshipper doesn’t mean having it all together it just means we are continually asking Christ to knit and hold us together in him. It means that not one word escapes our lips where the cost hasn’t been counted because we’ll have to give an account for every word, every word that we sung but didn’t mean.

I pray that all of us as worshippers would be authentic, that our hearts would be genuine in our praise, confession and words of adoration.

At the risk of repeating myself for the 20th time, Phoenix is one of my new favorite bands and their record Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is my record of the year for 2009. They didn’t need to do anything else to raise their cool index for me but they just did. You can download the multi-track of their song “Fences” for free and make your own mix of the song. They released 10 tracks for the song. Brilliant promotion.